


Death Itself Can’t Part Us

by moonmoth (greyvvardenfell)



Series: Moth & Raven: Canon-Compliant [7]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23588287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyvvardenfell/pseuds/moonmoth
Summary: Julian tells Reyja how they met, once he returns from the Hanged Man's realm after his hanging.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Julian Devorak/Original Character(s)
Series: Moth & Raven: Canon-Compliant [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2099187
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	Death Itself Can’t Part Us

“Reyja? It… it is you, isn't it?”

Julian tries to rise from Valdemar’s surgical slab but I rush to him before he can stagger to his feet. Tears are already pouring down my cheeks.

“Julian, you— you’re alive. You’re alive!”

He doesn’t say anything but wraps his arms around me and holds me tight. I can’t stop repeating his name, pressing it over and over into the throat that no longer bears the Hanged Man’s mark. He’s here, he’s alive, he’s… he’s mine.

His hands glide over my back, seeking every bit of me he can find. After a moment, he lifts the hem of my shirt to slide his fingers over skin instead. I reach down to unlace the belt around my waist, freeing the rest of my torso to his wandering touch.

“Julian…” My voice cracks. 

He draws a startled breath, seeming to notice for the first time the wetness on his neck.

“Oh, Reyja, darling, please don’t cry. I’m here. It’s alright, it’s all going to be okay.”

“I watched— I saw you _die_.” The word rips out of my mouth on the crest of a sob. The image of him, grotesque and boneless and wrong, is burned into my mind, overlaying the real body in front of me. His eye staring at me but seeing nothing, his mouth fallen open but not to speak, his limbs limp at the end of the hangman’s rope… He was dead. He was dead. He was _dead_.

He pulls me closer, rocking me gently. “Oh, my dearest, I’m so sorry…” 

“You died,” I repeat. The stress of the last few days has clouded my mind to the point where that’s all I can think of to say. I’m not surprised I passed out in the square, but it wasn’t enough. I didn’t wake feeling rested, I felt… I felt…

“I saw you.”

“If there had been another way, I wouldn’t have done such a—”

“No.” With effort, I break out of his embrace. I don’t want to leave and he doesn’t want to let me go, but I have to talk to him face to face. “No, I mean: I saw you in the Hanged Man’s realm.”

One eye scarlet even in the low light of the dungeon, Julian blinks, confused. “You…? How did…?”

I don’t know how. There was no reason I should’ve been privy to such a personal conversation. But somehow, his — I shudder to even think the word — death was my last straw. Watching his corpse sway in the salty ocean wind broke something in me, made it so I could return to the Hanged Man’s realm with him. Whatever it was, coincidence or design, I was there.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come back,” I tell him. My voice is so small, so strained, it doesn’t even sound like mine.

Julian kisses a tear from my cheek. Then another, and another. He buries his face in the crook of my shoulder and breathes deeply, rubbing my back and my sides and my hips. “I couldn’t leave you,” he finally says. “Not… not again.”

I weep in his arms. So much has been building for so long, I’m powerless against the onslaught. My death and his, the lack of sleep, the pressure from Nadia and the artificial time limit she imposed on finding answers, the sheer rush of emotions in finding him, kissing him… falling in love with him, compacted into such a short period. He doesn’t try to quiet me again, just holds me as I stain his shirt with tears.

By the time I’ve cried myself out, a headache is pounding across the crown of my head and his whole shoulder is wet, the thin white fabric stuck to his skin. 

“Oh no. I’m sorry.”

Julian shakes his head. He’s been crying too, I see, but he smiles. “You have nothing to be sorry for, sweetheart.”

“Your shirt…”

“It’s just a shirt. I’ll take the damn thing off if— here.” He scoots back and slips out of it, tugging it over his head and tossing it to the floor. “There. Nothing to worry about anymore. Come here, my darling.”

I crawl onto the surgical slab, straddling him. He hums in appreciation as I settle down on his chest and press my cheek to his breastbone. Reclining back, he sighs and begins to run his fingers through my hair.

“Did you, ah. Did you know?”

The question rumbles soothingly against me, his voice deep and gentle. It takes me a moment to parse the words.

“No. Not until then.”

One finger traces the swirl of my ear. “Are you alright?”

Am I? I’m not sure. It answers so many of the questions I’ve been asking myself for years. Of course I don’t have any memories; they must’ve died with me. The vague scraps I do recall -- snowdrift taller than I am, group of adults laughing, wide open sky and scent of mountain pines -- could be from anyone’s past. Nothing about them anchors them to me, specifically. Maybe they aren’t even mine, just gleaned from forgotten stories or passages out of the many books that kept me company in my isolation. I can’t say.

Am I alright? 

“I think so.”

Julian presses a kiss to my forehead as he winds his arms around me. “I’ll take it. I, erm, I suppose we have that in common now, don’t we? Not many can say that.”

Despite myself, I chuckle. He isn’t wrong; what other couple can claim that they bonded over returning from the dead?

Warmth spills from his gaze, washing over me like sunlight. “You have such a lovely smile, Reyja,” he says quietly. “I can’t wait to see it more often. I knew there was something special about you from the beginning, but… hmm. Do you remember? How we met?”

I know he’s not referring to his breaking-and-entering. We knew each other before the plague, the Hanged Man had said. Sadly, those memories are as lost to me as all the rest.

“I wish I did.”

He sighs. “I hadn’t been in Vesuvia long. A few months, I think. Ha, just long enough to think I'd finally kicked my smoking habit, funny enough. I promised myself I'd stop that when I came here, but the plague… oh, darling, it was everywhere. Families dying together, whole streets of vacant buildings, every resident gone, lost. I was working myself to the bone trying to save them. My rounds took all day and well into the night, far beyond the district boundary I should have stopped at. But people needed my help. Or someone’s help, anyway.

“Yours was the final stop of the day, a last-minute addition because the doctor in your district couldn’t make it and I said I’d pick up the slack. But it wasn’t you I was seeing, it was an older person. D-something. Dow-? Dor-?”

The name comes unbidden into my head. Maybe Asra said it once. “Dollezhan?”

“That’s it! They… mm, they were very sick. Nearly gone. I stayed with you until they passed. Didn’t know what else to do. It seemed like you were all the family they had, and they were all you had too. They were your mentor, you told me.”

“Yeah...” His recollection is stirring something in the furthest reaches of my memory. I can’t quite make it out, but it’s there. 

“Well, after I performed the last checks and sent for someone to come take their body, I didn’t want to leave. Something told me I was right where I needed to be. Call it wishful thinking, delirium, what have you, but I just sat down at the kitchen table to wait. Eventually you joined me. You looked so tired then, Rey. So worn down.”

“I can’t imagine you were in any better condition.”

“Ha! I don’t think so, no. Burned to embers, I was. But you thanked me while we sat there, and we got to talking. You know, like we did at the Raven.”

That, at least, is a clear memory, seeing as it was only days ago. We talked for hours that night, like old friends. 

“You told me you’d been just about to strike out on your own,” Julian says softly, running his thumb over my cheekbone. “Dollezhan taught you to work with people’s minds, guide their thoughts. Help them through their grief and trauma. I don’t know what urged me to say it, but I asked if you had considered joining the effort against the plague. And I remember, you looked at me with those stunning blue eyes and you said that’s exactly what you were planning.” 

He kisses me then, slipping his tongue between my lips and lingering, holding my face to his. 

When we part, he laughs breathlessly. “I wanted to do that whenever I saw you, after you started working at my clinic. And I knew, and you knew, that under any other circumstances, we would’ve, well…” He turns pink, then red, then clears his throat to continue. “We would’ve done exactly what we’re doing now.”

“What, made out in the operating room?”

He licks his lips, eyes hooded. “And more, I’m sure. It, ahem, it certainly wouldn’t have been sterile anymore.”

“Julian.”

“Oh, darling, I could barely resist you then. And I can’t resist you now. You’re so… so wonderful, in every way. Everything I could hope for in a—” He shifts under me, blushing again. His hands fall to my hips and take hold, a squeeze just hard enough to feel good. “In a partner.”

I knew what he was going to say, but it sets my heart fluttering nevertheless. Smiling, I lean down to kiss him. 

“Nothing ever happened between us,” he says as we draw back for air. “However much I wanted it to.” His brow creases with pain and he frowns before pushing on. “By the time I knew you were infected, you… your body had already been sent to the Lazaret. The plague claimed you faster than most. A day, maybe two. Someone, I never learned who, found you in your apartment, already… already gone. I was distraught, Reyja. Truly. I went mad, I think. Crazed by grief. I marched straight up to the palace and demanded something be done. I don’t know what I thought they could do, but damn it, they needed to do it. And instead, Lucio insisted I stay and work on the cure in _his_ laboratory, with _his_ specialists. He remembered me from his early years as a mercenary. Ha, and I remembered him too. A little too well. Did you know that I was the one who amputated his arm?”

“Seriously?”

“I’m afraid so. I was nineteen, maybe twenty? And he couldn’t have been much older. My own mentor was tied up on the other side of the battlefield, unable to reach us through the fighting. It was operate or lose him, and against all odds I was successful. If I had known what he would become, what it would cost to save him…”

I cup his cheek. “You still would’ve done it. You’re not a murderer, Juley.”

Julian snorts, then covers my hand with his own. “No. And I know that for certain now.”

We lay in silence for several moments. His eyes rove my face, studying me with an intensity I wouldn’t have welcomed from anyone else. Eventually, he sits up, guiding me with him and resettling me in his lap. I wrap my legs around his hips and cuddle into his bare chest. Beneath my touch, his heart pounds, very much alive. 

“What a remarkable twist of fate it is, my dearest, to have you in my arms at last,” he murmurs into my hair. “We found each other again, after losing what we had entirely. That’s why I came back. To know that I had a second chance at being with you, and to throw it away? Even I’m not that much of a masochist.”

Yes, I saw him die. But I also saw him bring himself back to life. However many twists it takes, fate does seem to know what it wants in the end. 

“Thank you, Julian.”

He smiles and leans down to kiss me again. “Death itself can’t part us, darling.”

If I could, I’d never stop kissing him. “Good.”


End file.
